BODY COMPOSITION & GENETICS

Take a look at this recent post from another men's forum and tell me what you think. This guy looks like he tried everything, even TRT :

"What I'm going to write defies common held beliefs about weight loss & body mass. In high school I lost lots of weight. I went from 170 lbs. to 117lbs. I lost the weight slowly, ate lots of protein & exercised. Even at 117lbs. I had fat deposits around my gut, sides & lower back. Couldn't get rid of it. After H.S., I took up bodybuilding as a means of redistributing my weight mass. I was zealous, enthusiastic, but to no avail. Even after 3 fanatical years in which I tried EVERYTHING, the results were the same. 170lbs. to 117lbs, no transformation. I was sure there was a substantial loss of muscle mass. No easy way to gauge how much.

In 1999 (age 42, while first on TRT) I discovered the Tanita scale, that measured body fat. I did a weight loss experiment while working out extensively, then later duplicated the weight loss experiment while absolutely sedentary. The results were absolutely the same & as follows:
166lbs. 22% body fat
158lbs. 22% body fat
150 lbs. 22%body fat
142 lbs. 22% body fat

Very stable 22%. My metabolism had remained the same, as my clothes fit the same as they had for 25 years.
At age 45, my metabolism started going haywire, & now at 57 my measured body fat varies greatly from 30-34%. Very unstable. The quick variances on my new scale show fluctuations in hydration levels, that apparently drop markedly with age. TRT & weight training don't alter any of this for me. I suspect HGH might help, but that's cost prohibitive. Just goes to show how we all differ genetically.

Regardless of just how accurate the Tanita scales are, it doesn't matter, I got enough information from those scales to verify what I suspected all along: that I was genetically incapable of losing weight w/o losing muscle mass too. It was obvious from my appearance (at 117lbs. I could barely see my top abdominal rows, the bottom not visible at all); I was markedly weaker, couldn't handle the heavier weights I formerly had (after all at 166lbs. my lean body mass was about 129 lbs.) and it was obvious by the way my clothes fit me.

Protein? Late Spring, early Summer of 1998, I stabilized my weight at 140. I ate tons of steak & eggs. If all that extra protein (while working out zealously) made that much of a difference, my body fat levels would've gone down, while my muscle mass would've increased markedly (& I would've looked fit & trim wearing those French cut slacks that were in vogue then.)

Some of us were descendants of those who lived in cold climates in which people had to live for months on their own body fat, as food was scarce.

I had the will, but truly there isn't always a way. Those who claim anyone can do something because they can are comparing apples to oranges."